Monday, August 31, 2009

I've been so out of it lately. I didn't read the news in Maine, and now I keep thinking I'll catch up and understand what's happening. But I'm not sure anymore. The health care debate, for example. People actually like our system as it is? Are they nuts? An article in the New Yorker said that when Obama was running, most Americans said the system was terrible. But now that the govt. is thinking of changing it, most say it's fine.

So it's fear of change, the article claims. Wow. Hasn't it changed a lot already?

I remember in college when I broke my arm. It was $167. An ER visit. A cast . . .

As a kid, my sister almost chopped her finger off. The doctor came to our house and sewed it back on in our playroom. No ER trip. No wait or delayed bills coming months later . . .

Then I think how I had so many eye appointments and operations as a child. My mom paid the doctor every year with a Christmas ham. And I wrote the doctor letters, and he wrote me back! I called him up when I could finally hit the ball in softball and tennis. He was very excited. I felt as if we were working together for a common goal. He was like a coach. He visited our home and showed me all the pictures of my progress, from childhood to my teens . . .

Of course, that was unusual, but the doctors did seem more caring.

Back then the doctors were just as nice as vets who came to the farm and knew the animals and enlisted our help with the treatments.

Even now the vet calls me to ask how my pups are doing when they've had a sore ear or a bad tummy.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

One of the highlight of our time in Maine this summer was having Kevin Knobloch from the Union of Concerned Scientists visit and give a talk on climate change at the College of the Atlantic. Here he's talking to my sister from the top of Schoodic Mountain.